


The Keys To His Heart

by Dreamin



Series: 366 Sherlolly fics & ficlets [83]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Prompt Fill, Supernatural Elements, The Final Problem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-15 23:59:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14800415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreamin/pseuds/Dreamin
Summary: Home, life, faith, and love. What do they mean to Sherlock?





	The Keys To His Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Another stand-alone. This was inspired by a couple of things. First is the September 24th prompt -- "Write about a door key." Second is a set of stamped keys I bought at a craft store a few years ago.

“Sherlock! It’s time for lunch!”

Sherlock ignored his mother. At five years old, he had already decided that he knew better than adults when and what he should eat. And right now, he was a lot more curious than he was hungry.

He was in the attic, poking around at the various boxes. Under a portrait of an ancestor that looked way too much like his older brother Mycroft for his liking, Sherlock found an old cigar box. It jangled when he shook it. Inside, he found four keys. They looked like ordinary house keys except that each one had a word stamped on them – “Home,” “Life,” “Faith,” and “Love.”

Excited about his find, he took the box downstairs to the kitchen. His parents and Mycroft were seated at the kitchen table, eating roast beef sandwiches.

“Look what I found,” Sherlock said excitedly as he showed them the keys.

His parents made little sounds of interest, but Mycroft took one look at the keys and smirked. “Of course you would like something so common.”

“Common?”

“Yes, those are just common house keys.”

“But the words…”

“What words?”

“The words!” He picked up the Home key. “Can’t you see it? It says ‘Home’ right there!”

“It’s just your imagination, Sherlock,” Violet said gently. “Or perhaps you’re overtired and need a nap.”

“I’m not tired,” he protested, pouting.

“I think you are. Go on.”

Sherlock stuck his tongue out at his smirking brother then put the Home key back in the box and took it up to his room. Out of curiosity, he tried the Home key on his bedroom door. It didn’t fit. After his forced nap and a late lunch, he tried the Home key on the house’s front door. It didn’t fit there either.

Sherlock was fascinated by the four keys but when everyone he showed them to said they didn’t see the words, he stopped talking about them. Eventually, he put the box of keys in the bottom of his closet and the memory of them in the basement of his growing Mind Palace.

* * *

He was packing up to leave for uni when he found the box at the bottom of his closet. Not knowing why, Sherlock stuffed it into his suitcase just before he zipped it up. It wasn’t until he was moving his things into 221B Baker Street that he decided to finally open the box. The four keys were still there, just as he remembered them. On a whim, he tried the Home key in the door to the sitting room. It didn’t fit, something he had to admit he expected.

But when he tried it on the front door, the key fit. Then, to Sherlock’s utter amazement, it vanished. Sherlock couldn’t understand it at all – the lock on the front door and the Home key were completely different. It shouldn’t have worked, yet it did. But like the remaining keys themselves, he decided to keep that bit of knowledge to himself.

It wasn’t until after John moved in the next day that he felt compelled to try another one. Sure enough, the Life key fit in the lock on the sitting room door, then it too vanished.

_Why would the building be my home but the sitting room is my life?_

It wasn’t until after he and John started seeing clients in the sitting room that he understood. _The Work is my life. But what of the other two?_

* * *

Sherlock normally kept the two remaining keys hidden between the mattress and box spring of his bed. He never felt any compulsion to take either of them out and try them. Then came Moriarty and “Richard Brook.” As he and Molly prepared for him to fake his death, Sherlock felt the need to check the pockets of his Belstaff. In one of them, he found the Faith key, despite knowing that he had never removed it from its hiding place.

While Molly was distracted, he tried the key in the lock of the path lab’s door. As he expected, the key fit then vanished. _My faith is in science._ He walked back into the lab and saw Molly, still analyzing evidence. _And in my pathologist._ He knew they wouldn’t let him down.

* * *

The Love key was left behind when he went off to destroy Moriarty’s web. Love was something he didn’t believe in and certainly didn’t have time for. He shoved the memory into a filing cabinet in the Can’t Be Bothered Right Now room of his Mind Palace.

After the web was destroyed, after Tom and the Watson wedding, Shezza and Janine and Magnussen, after 1895, after Rosie and Mary and Norbury, Culverton and the return of Shezza, after Eurus and Sherrinford, after everything, Sherlock knew it was finally time. He stood on Molly’s doorstep just before dawn, his bandaged hands barely able to hold the Love key but when he tried it in the lock, it fit. _This only confirms what I already knew._ The key vanished just before Molly opened the door, her eyes still red from crying all night. She opened her mouth to speak but he beat her to it.

“I love you, Molly.”


End file.
